Rossana Casale Quintet – Almost Blue

In common language, BLUE is the color of MELANCHOLY and HOPE. From the feeling blue comes the BLUES, which has its roots in the songs of the slaves in the cotton fields, in the hope of freedom and revenge. “The blues is more than a color, it is a moan of pain, the taste of conflict, a sad refrain but also a game that life plays” (note: All blues- Kind of Blue M. Davis 1959). And it is the color blue, a metaphor for spirituality and transcendence, tranquility and silence, contemplation, the concept of Rossana Casale’s new project set to be released in June 2024 for Egea Music.

“A few month ago, while taking a long walk by the sea, on one of those days when you don’t really know how you are”, Casale recounts, “watching the clear meeting between water and sky, I found myself singing to myself the song Blue Skies by Irving Berlin and consequently scrolling through all the jazz songs that mentioned the word blue in their title or lyrics. From the most melancholic ballads like Little girl blue, sung by Nina Simone in her very first album in ’59 or Am I blue made famous by Ethel Waters, to Almost Blue by Elvis Costello sung by the velvet voice of Chet Baker, Blue in green, a mystical piece by Miles Davis, to more carnal and abstract songs like Afro Blue by Coltrane or fun ones like Blue Rondo a la Turk by Dave Brubeck, which even Al Jarreau made successful in the ’80s playing on the text itself. I thought of many. So I came up with the idea of creating a work entirely focused on exploring that word so rightly directed towards jazz and the musician who liberates it from its prisons that only want it to be sad. It’s not just that”.

Rossana Casale chooses the songs that jazz has dedicated to “The color of colors”, as Miles Davis defined it, and creates her new in-jazz project adding the unreleased “Shades of blue”, written together with musician Luigi Bonafede. A return to purer jazz, that of Casale, after several years (Jazz in me 1994, Billie Holiday in me 2004), even though jazz itself has always been the home for her dedicated albums (Jaques Brel in me 1999, Strani Frutti 2000, Il Signor G e l’Amore 2013, Round Christmas 2016, JONI 2022).

With her are great jazzmen with long careers in Italy and abroad, excellent musicians who return from her past with whom she has shared albums and tours. They are: Carlo Atti on tenor sax, Luigi Bonafede on piano, Enzo Zirilli on drums and a new acquaintance, Alessandro Maiorino on double bass.